Unfortunately, I think ‘education’ is decreasingly educating. This sort of moan is not the same as bewailing the decline in the teaching of Latin - it’s much more profound. Many varied factors, but perhaps worst of all AI, are combining to reduce young peoples’ level of thinking and critical analysis. In recent decades many students used to arrive at university not knowing how to write a critical essay, but they could be shown how to do that. Now through AI they can delegate that task, and are none the wiser at the end of the exercise. For me that’s really worrying because young people are losing the ability to reason. And as I explained in my previous post, the problem is most evident in the anglophone world.
Should probably add that none of this is knocking your decision to return to the UK - we each have different circumstances.
We returned at the end of 2019 and I can honestly say the Uk isn’t as bad as some are trying to paint it. Does it have issues?, of course it does but then, try to find a country that doesn’t. Just from reading some of your posts JohnBoy, I’m pretty sure you and your wife will quickly adapt to your new life and have a long and happy time.
Me neither. I find it very instructive that in the UK, it is the likes of Reform UK that continually bash the UK. For them, everything is terrible and people have no future (unless they get in … yeah, right). They must really hate the UK to be putting it down so much.
There were two polls done. One asking about national issues, where immigration came third, and another about local issues, where immigration came seventh.
I find that difference quite interesting as it may suggest that many people think that immigration causes issues around the country, but don’t see it as big an issue themselves locally.
I’m never quite sure how much to trust their polls, given the obvious right wing connections.
However if you look at that data, and dive a bit deeper into which groups are “concerned” about immigration you will find it is predominantly elderly conservatives who voted “leave”.
However even if you accept that a lot of people are putting immigration as a concern I would still want to go behind that data and find out why they think that.
For instance BBC news reporting of the issue rarely (i.e never) discuses any positive impact of immigration.
If you constantly expose people to reports about how high the numbers are, that are naturally going to list it as a concern.
Either all the polls and research carried out by the main political parties are completely wrong or shock horror the UK public are concerned about immigration, the only debate is whether people are being manipulated to think that way.
Although I always approach YouGov days with a little skepticism I did not actual claim they were wrong.
BUT look at the demographic which is driving the concern.
Also, as I said, if the public hear only “we must do something about immigration” they are more likely to report concern when the pollsters come asking.
We actually used to use them at the business I spent the majority of my time working with and ended up switching to someone else… I forget offhand who, because what they were giving is wasn’t actually very useful. We’re an entertainment industry business so good accurate research and data is incredibly important, but the assumption was that while they may be good at socio and political data they were massively out of their depth with consumer insights. They made a massive play to expand out of their traditional avenues, partly I understood because of a loss of business due to a perceived right wing bias, and heavily courted retailers, blue chip consumer goods groups and entertainment businesses. But our experience wasn’t great, and I understood some pretty large consumer businesses had a similar experience.
All parties have ‘ policies’ , it’s very easy to have a ‘policy’ when you aren’t in power.
I’d have a policy that would give everyone beer tokens. I’d also employ 10 million more police to patrol the streets , build 100 new hospitals and give free nursery places to all children.
How would I pay for this? Dammed if I know, but hey, I’ve got some very appealing policies.
I worked in political research for 5 years and believe me you can make any poll give you the answer you want.
There was, many years ago, an episode of ‘ Yes Minister, or Yes Prime minister, can’t remember which, in which Humphrey gets the prime minister to say ‘ yes’ to something when he actually wants to say ‘no’ by asking a series of questions that meant he had to say ‘yes’ to the final question.
As I have an interest in polling I have looked at the Yougov questionnaires. And to say they are poor is an understatement. In fact any questionnaire that relies entirely on closed response questions lacks validity.
The last few elections have demonstrated just how poor, all political polls, except exit polls , are at predicting outcomes.
I guess it’s entirely possible to get the answer you want by carrying out your research by interviewing in certain areas & places at certain times e.g. a shopping centre in a down-at-heel town, mid-morning, when you might expect to meet more older/retired people &/or those not in work than any other demographic.
We came back due to family reasons in 2016. Aside from immigration, which is clearly something that needs to be better dealt with, my principal issue is not being able to get. GP appointment. I believe there are a lot of places in France like that as well. Mind you, a functioning Labour government wouldn’t be a bad thing.
I got tossed out of a pool that did a lot of YouGov survrys because I complained sbout the [constant] bias in the way the questions were framed on order to drive the desired answer.
These days online also so many review or survey processes are clearly programmed to route you differently if you’re not ticking the boxes they want.
